1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of information handling system manufacture, and more particularly to a method and system for network-based configuration of information handling system software.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Purchasers of information handling systems typically prefer to select hardware and software components so that a purchased information handling system is built and configured to the purchaser's specification. One difficulty with building information handling systems to order with a wide variety of hardware and software components is that each unique information handling system generally is built with a unique configuration. Network tools are available to download software components as images or executable files that install on information handling system storage devices, such as a hard disk drive. However, in order for the network tools to communicate with the information handling system, an operating system typically is required to control the hardware components. Thus, during manufacture, a floppy disk is often used to initially power-up the information handling system with a manufacture operating system that includes configuration information for the hardware components, such as the NIC and hard disk drive, to communicate with network tools. The floppy disk provides information to build, test and install software on the information handling system and also provides a persistent storage area that tracks the software configuration process through manufacture of the information handling system, such as through repeated boots and downloading of images to the hard disk drive that destroy the contents of hard disk drives during storage of the image.
A difficulty with using floppy disks to manufacture information handling systems is that the preparation of a floppy disk for each information handling system is expensive and time consuming. As hardware components of an information handling system are assembled, the identification of each component is tracked and used to create the configuration information on the floppy disk for initial power-up during manufacture of the information handling system. Copying of the configuration information to a floppy disk is slow and unreliable, and the storage capacity is limited. Further, floppy disk drives are now often not included with information handling systems. One way to avoid the use of floppy disks during manufacture is to instead use the hard disk drive. However, hard disk drives will not work in all situations, such as when RAID hardware is installed or no FAT partitions exist, and limits the use of imaging techniques since imaging tools destroy the contents stored on the hard disk drive. Another way to avoid the use of floppy disks is to initiate boot from a network, such as with a Pre-boot Execution Environment (PXE) server, however, PXE boots generally requires that basic software configuration be installed to support network communications.